Recent Backgammon Articles

I love the direction some things in backgammon have been headed over the years. We've seen a huge spike in match recording, streaming, and matches being released to the public thanks to varied advances in technology.

We have two kinds of competitions in our Chicago chouette: first is simply the game itself, and it is a tough game. We're all seasoned, Open players and many of us have 30 or 40 years of experience playing in chouettes.

My plan had originally been to annotate the entire finals match between Bower v. Simborg but after receiving
feedback from both Chuck and Phil and realizing how much longer of an article that would make I decided to cherry
pick based on their responses and the big picture.

Backgammon has been around for five thousand years. If it were like other sports its Hall Of Fame would feature busts of players older than the pyramids. Instead, we are just getting around to establishing a Hall now.

I only had three backgammon matches streamed from the ABT event in San Antonio at the end of January/beginning of February. I always want to be streamed because I love having my matches recorded so I can not only see how I played but also review my errors and blunders later on.

Beginner Backgammon Tutorials

Backgammon is an easy game to learn, but a hard game to play well. Over the years, I have learned several excellent guidelines to checker play that generally guide me to the best moves. I teach all of these to my students, and I know they will be helpful to you as well.

I have found that the best way for my students to learn backgammon is to break the game down into single, specific areas of play, discuss then independently, and then practice just that area until they get it.

Backgammon is all about odds. It also is possible to play excellent backgammon without calculating numbers and odds in your head constantly, simply by playing moves that "look" more appealing than others.

Advanced Backgammon Tutorials

Here's a good example of how complex backgammon can be. There are two positions in this article where Black holds a 2-cube and is on roll. See if you can guess the proper cube action for both positions. Be prepared to be surprised.

What I consider one of the most irritating things in backgammon: You are rolling the dice and playing along and having a really nice time, and then all of a sudden your opponent does something extremely irritating and rude. He doubles you!

One of the many differences between a good backgammon player and a great player is knowing when to play on for the gammon and knowing when to turn the cube. Playing for the gammon also affects checker play.

I happen to believe that backgammon is a great game, just the way it is. From time to time, however, it is fun to change the game up a bit. Here are some "alternative ways to play that you not only will enjoy, but you will find them to be interesting learning exercises as well.

Some people say that backgammon is now fully in the computer age. I think these people are right - but they are only right about 97 percent of the time. I believe there are still many plays that the bots simply do not fully understand.